Seattle City Council Sustainability & Transportation Committee 3/19/19

Good afternoon, everybody.

It is Tuesday, March, sorry, Tuesday, March 19th at 2 p.m.

Welcome to the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

My name is Mike O'Brien, chair of the committee, staffed today by Jasmine Rawaha.

Thank you for being here, Jasmine.

And I believe I'll have other colleagues joining me momentarily.

We have four agenda items today.

We're going to get an update on the What's happening on downtown traffic, especially in relation to the buses coming out of the tunnel this weekend.

And we'll be asking some specific questions about progress towards the basic bike network resolution that we passed last summer.

We will get a presentation on street ends from SDOT and advocates.

And then we will have a public hearing on updating the comprehensive plan with a transportation project list and anticipation of possible legislation around transportation impact fees.

And finally, we'll have legislation around, I'm drawing a blank, University of Washington, Oh yeah, the UW mobility plan around 43rd Avenue as the light rail station comes online.

So with that, we'll start with public comment.

I have eight people signed up.

Alex Zimmerman, you're first, followed by Vicky Clark, and then Sarah Uldhoffen.

You'll each have up to two minutes, and the timer will begin.

Thank you, sir.

Sieg Heil, my dear Fuhrer.

A pure anti-Semite, criminal, and killer.

My name is Alexander, and I want to speak about the tunnel.

I've seen many idiots in this city for 33 years, but the tunnel, what we have, $6 billion, it's a very unique situation.

It's never happened before in human history.

Small city like Seattle, 700,000 cockroaches live in this.

Build a tunnel for $6 billion, make everybody happy, waterfront billionaires.

Nice, I like this.

How this happen?

How this happen in my eyes, my old stupid eyes?

Because we have a criminal in this chamber, official criminal, recognized by court.

Harrell, criminal, violate law, constitutional law, open public meeting.

Bakhshat, criminal, recognized by court, violate Constitutional law open publicly.

Gonzales, a beautiful, brown, smart council, five times violates its law.

In court, recognizes.

Why is this in this chamber?

It's exactly the problem that we have.

Because the 700,000 idiots who live in this city, very quiet, nobody come to her and ask her very simple question, how is this possible?

So she violate five times, and she staying in this chamber.

How is this possible?

It's never happened before in American history.

So Gonzales supposed to be moved by tomorrow.

Yesterday she put doing this, nothing happen.

For this I love Seattle.

For this I staying for 30, 30 years, because Seattle make me happy.

When you have too many idiots around, it makes your life nice.

A little bit miserable, but very nice.

It's a circle.

Stand up Seattle.

Stand up America.

Clean this idiotic chamber.

Thank you very much.

Vicky, you're next.

I'm Vicki Clark, Seattle Policy Manager for Cascade Bicycle Club.

The Downtown Bike Network's an essential element to keeping people moving through to downtown during the Seattle squeeze, and it's reassuring to see that SDOT is advancing many pieces of the basic bike network to connect downtown to the neighborhoods to the south, north, and east of downtown.

As we saw during January's viaduct closure, when people took to their bikes in record numbers, people turned to biking to get around when congestion looms.

And that's a win for everyone, not just people on bikes.

I always like to remind people that when I'm on a bike, I'm not in the car in front of them or taking up that last seat on a tightly packed bus.

With the second avenue protected bike lane, the spine of the network in place, the most pressing work is connecting that spine to neighborhoods north, south, and east.

A network is only as good as its weakest link.

And while gaps remain, we won't see numbers of people biking that truly reflect demand.

It's simple.

Without a connected network, we're assuming people will ride alongside multiple lanes of fast-moving, erratic traffic.

It's a big ask.

That's why making connections as soon as possible matters.

Protected bike lanes on Pike Pine to 2nd, a connection from Dearborn to 2nd, Westlake to 2nd along 9th, and extending 12th all the way to Yesler will all help.

Thanks.

Thank you, Vicky.

I've been joined by my colleagues, Council Member Johnson and Swant.

Thank you both for being here.

No problem.

Sarah, you're next.

And Sarah, you're going to be followed by Andrew Kitty and then Jamie Holter.

Awesome.

All right.

My name is Sarah Udelhoven.

I'm just a citizen and advocate for bike and pedestrian safety for increasing our options for moving around the city more safely.

I consider myself a pretty experienced cyclist.

I've biked across the country.

I've biked around Seattle for the past three years pretty extensively.

I choose not to own a car, so my bike really is my freedom of getting around.

But every day, I see close calls between drivers and between people on bikes, and it's super scary out there.

And for me, I feel like I'm pretty experienced and I'm comfortable out there, but I can only imagine somebody who's trying to get out on a bike.

So right now, biking really is not safe or an accessible option for the majority of the population.

But with increased traffic in Seattle, along with significant infrastructure changes that are coming up, We really need a diversity of safe, accessible options for people to move around the city.

So I'm here today with one simple request to continue to make strides forward on building out the basic bike network.

Protected bike lanes really encourage riding by a broader and a more diverse user base.

And I want biking to feel like an approachable option for anyone in the community who needs to move around the city.

Additionally, I'd really like to see the city pair this bike infrastructure with education of some kind, encouraging community partners to teach people on bikes about the rules of the road, to teach drivers how to operate around cyclists, how to navigate people on their bikes, how to navigate around bike lanes.

I see plenty of drivers turning left across the bike lane off of second on a red arrow.

I've seen a lot of people almost get hit.

And it's super scary.

So we need the infrastructure improvements along with the educational components.

And I think these two things really need to move forward hand in hand.

So thank you.

Thank you, Sarah.

Andrew?

Hello, my name is Andrew Kidd, and I'm with Rainier Valley Greenways in Seattle 350. My house is about a mile and a quarter from the light rail, and so I figured that the bike and the light rail is the best way to get downtown for me by far.

And when I'm riding from my house, I'm very aware that I'm a tall guy, and I have a big white helmet, and I start kind of big on my bike, and I feel like maybe I'm a little safe, because everyone can see me.

I'm really big.

But then again, sometimes I don't feel that safe.

I feel like, wow, they're going pretty fast by me.

Anyway, it's not that safe out there, even for people who are really visible like me.

I read a lot about planning and bike networks.

And what I read is that bikes are good for local businesses.

And I often shop on my bike.

I read that bikes are good for air quality because, well, duh, they're good for air quality.

You don't pollute.

They're good for public health because people exercise.

They're good for public safety because they calm traffic.

They do so many things.

I'm just mystified by why it's taken Seattle so long, given all of the things that we value in our city, why it's taken us so long.

Thank you, Andrew.

Jamie, you're going to be followed by Drew Dresman and then Megan Cruz.

My name is Jamie Holter, and I'm the former communications manager at WSDOT, Northwest Region and Shoreline.

I'm currently the communications director for King County Superior Court, and I'm a volunteer board member for the Green Roads Foundation.

I'm here today to talk about Green Roads, which is an international nonprofit born and based in Puget Sound and dedicated to greening the design, construction, and maintenance of transportation infrastructure.

Specifically, I'm here today to talk about the U-District Mobility Plan as an opportunity to showcase Seattle's environmental leadership in public infrastructure.

Green Roads appreciates the hard work of the U-District Advocate Citizen Action Group and the rest of the U-District Mobility Group for their parts in co-creating the U-District Station Area Mobility Plan.

We also thank you for your service and for Seattle's demonstrated leadership in sustainability and transportation.

It has resulted in a beautiful vision for U-District.

We see this as a mindset and an opportunity to go one step further with green road certification.

I'm hoping to persuade you to amend the U-District mobility plans concept on pages 30 and 31 to declare a green road certification requirement.

Pedestrian safety, bicycle connectivity, and aesthetics are a big part of the mobility plan, but there is so much more to sustainable transportation.

Green transportation infrastructure means green best practices.

It means everything that touches a transportation project, from materials, to managing water runoff, to maximizing transit, to traffic flow, has green glasses on.

Sourcing materials close by to reduce the carbon footprint, designing a project with water absorptive pavement that cleans before it drains, designing intersections to fundamentally reduce idle time for vehicles and maximize throughput.

In Bellingham, they recycled public housing toilets and mixed them with concrete, creating the first potty crate.

As a resident of the Seattle area for many years, I know these eco-commitments are all in the city's wheelhouse.

I'm running out of time, but I just wanted to tell you that Washington is not alone in its commitment to the Green Roads sustainable transportation model.

Green Roads works across the globe in countries like New Zealand and Canada, and even in the United Arab Emirates, but you didn't see that coming.

We work in the U.S. with states like California and Oregon, Texas, and North Carolina, and right in your backyard with projects in Bothell and Redmond.

GreenRoads is policy in some of these places, including New Zealand for high-dollar projects.

I will respect everybody else's time, but if you're interested, please feel free to contact GreenRoads, and I have some materials that I can leave for you.

Thank you, Jamie.

Would appreciate some materials.

It sounds like a really intriguing idea.

Drew?

Thank you.

I'm here today.

I'm a transportation planner with Seattle Children's, and I'm representing the U District Mobility Group, which was a coalition of various community members, residents, representatives of UW, U District Partnership, Small Business Association, who all got together, realizing that all our light rail stations are going to be precious jewels of mobility that we have to really optimize and maximize.

And frankly, community kind of had to step up because there wasn't really a holistic plan about how everything was going to work around the station.

So I'm very proud of what's gone into the plan and very grateful that you're looking at a resolution to recognize that by the city.

I will just say it was a great opportunity to really have in-depth conversation with neighbors in a time where that seems to be at a premium, where we really got to delve into looking at the long-term possibilities for the station area.

And a couple themes really came up, which was people recognize that U District is a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood.

It relies on transit to survive.

And there needs to be a lot of improvements around the station to make it not just a place that people can walk to, but that they want to walk to, that they feel safe walking to day and night, that they feel welcome at.

So we're very pleased that the first project, kind of in the scope of the plan, the 43rd Street project, appears to be getting that attention from the city so far, and we know they're selecting a preferred alternative.

And we just ask you to help stay on them, look what's in the plan, look at what they're doing, make sure they keep the focus on pedestrians, on people, because there's going to be tens of thousands of them on that street.

Right now it's closed off, so it actually doesn't support any vehicular through traffic.

And there's not really any reason for it to do so in the future.

So we need to prioritize pedestrians, make sure small businesses have access they need.

We don't want to displace any of the small businesses.

And really just keep the eye forward on the sustainable, able to support dense development neighborhood that will be the U District in the future.

Thank you.

You too.

Megan, you're going to be followed by Clara Cantor.

Clara, you're the last one who signed up today.

Thank you.

Hello again.

I'm here to talk about transportation impact fees, which is on the ballot today.

They're a reasonable and good way to support our transportation system, but not the way they're being calculated.

The way this is going to be calculated is based on LOS that measures just single occupancy vehicle cars.

And that leaves out two of the biggest drivers of traffic we have on our streets now.

One is the TNCs, also known as Ubers and Lyfts, and the others are delivery trucks.

And I want to give you some statistics to illustrate this.

In 2018, a recognized report by SDOT says private ride TNCs put 2.8 miles on a road for each mile of personal driving removed.

That's a 180% increase.

In Seattle, the most recent figures I could get from the second quarter of 2018 reported 17,500 Uber trips a day in the 98101 zip code alone.

TNCs in this zip code rose 30% between 2016 and 2017. So it's only going up.

The same report SDOT refers to summarizes that TNC trips draw from users of sustainable modes like transit, bikes, and walking.

rather than personal auto use.

The net result is more driving mileage and less use of public transit.

My question is, how will these vehicle miles be measured and captured the way this bill is currently written?

Regarding freight and parcel delivery, SDOT has done groundbreaking research about how many trucks are on the road and the drive of e-commerce with all the packages we get every day, they're going to double by 2023, and there's no way to count those trucks I've found.

That's just a big open question.

And that doubling is without any population increase, and we know that that's not the case here.

So my other question, how will this be measured and captured in this bill?

If we don't capture these vehicles, Seattle will double its loss because it doesn't insist that new towers are built with adequate infrastructure to contain their transportation impacts.

They're not being built with enough loading space or space for garbage to be contained interiorly.

and the alleys aren't wide enough.

We have a chance now to do all that, but we're not doing it.

So we have to have two parts to this.

We have to capture all those things that aren't being captured right now in the LOS bill, and we have to do the infrastructure piece, or we'll lose.

We can't pay our way out of this.

If we don't have sufficient infrastructure, it won't work.

And one side note, just this.

I understand the city has been studying alley congestion and infrastructure problems, and that it may be slowing down, I encourage you to support this in every way you can.

Thanks.

Thanks, Megan.

Clara.

Hello, my name is Clara Cantor.

I'm from Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

We're very excited by the support that the council has shown for building out the basic bike network, recognizing that it's an equity issue for our city, that people deserve safe routes while they're traveling into and around our city, whether or not they can afford to buy a car or a bus pass, and recognizing that this is about our city's safety and health and sustainability, and recognizing that the 110,000 people who are estimated to use the completed basic bike network represent that many fewer people getting around our city by less sustainable modes.

We need to build this network that is safe, that is connected, without these terrifying four block sections where infrastructure just ends.

SDOT has stated that the four block gap on 12th Avenue between King Street and Yesler, which was a part of this resolution, is currently off the table despite being required by council, despite the high number of people who've been injured in those four blocks, myself included, despite it being the most critical four blocks for safety and comfort of the entire basic bike network.

And we basically just like to ask the council to hold Estat to the promises that they made last summer and build this network through downtown.

And also recognize that this map represents literally the barest of minimums.

It's literally just one safe, protected route into downtown, particularly from the south and from the east.

and that once this is completed, which it should be, we need to continue moving forward and building out the rest of the city's network.

Thank you.

Thank you, Claire.

Is there anyone else who would like to give public comment tonight?

All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and close public comment and move on to agenda item number one.

If presenters want to come forward, then I'll have Jasmine read it into the record.

This is an information item related to the status update on end of downtown Seattle transit tunnel joint operations and near term action plan.

Welcome everyone, thank you all for being here.

We didn't assign seats so you'll have to figure that out.

Once you're seated, we'll start with introductions.

Hi, I'm Heather Marks.

I'm the Director of Downtown Mobility for Seattle Department of Transportation.

Hi, I'm Megan Shepard.

I'm the Deputy Director of Downtown Mobility for the Seattle Department of Transportation.

Hello, my name is Jim Curtin.

I am with the Project Development Division in the Seattle DOT.

Great.

So thank you all for being here today.

We have spent a lot of time in the last couple of years and certainly in the last couple of months talking about the Seattle squeeze.

We got through phase one and then there was phase 1A of a snowstorm that wasn't on the plan, but we managed to get through that too.

So thank you for your ongoing work.

And in the next few days, we're going to see a pretty significant and permanent change in our transportation network as buses come out of the bus tunnel.

Wanted to get an update on that and wanted to get an update on some of the other investments that are happening in the downtown area to mitigate some of those impacts.

So thank you for being here and I will hand it over to you all.

Okay, well, thank you so much for having us here today.

As you mentioned on Saturday, we are ending joint operations in the downtown Seattle transit tunnel.

You may already know that the downtown Seattle transit tunnel is the only transit tunnel, probably in the world, but definitely in the United States, that has passenger stops and uses both buses and transit.

So on Saturday, that ends.

All those 830 buses are going to come to the surface and be operating with traffic on the surface street, making the downtown Seattle transit tunnel a light rail only facility.

That is going to impact the nine, yes, seven routes that operate in the tunnel, but there are additional routes that will also be impacted because we're going to shuffle how the buses move through Seattle so we don't have one bus route that is, or one bus way that is overburdened.

The information is available to folks who ride the bus or if you wanted more details available on Metro's website.

A couple of the buses that operate in the tunnel are real workhorses for the system, particularly the 550, the 41, and the 255. So this is a lot of transit service and a lot of riders that are affected.

One of the things that SDOT and Metro are working on together is implementing all-door boarding on 3rd Avenue.

This is, if you've ridden RapidRide before, you know you can tap on, so you tap off board, and then that makes boarding in a lighting a lot faster.

So on 3rd Avenue, you'll be able to use that ORCA card reader for any of the routes that operate on 3rd Avenue.

Right now, there are already ORCA card readers at 21 of the stops that are involved.

This slide says 12, but I think it's 10. I count the dots and it keeps being 10. where Metro is going to install new ORCA card readers.

That's going to happen over the course of the next year or so.

But for the service change and ongoing until we have those ORCA card readers, they're going to have people with handheld readers in the peak period in the afternoon to speed that boarding and alighting.

Okay, so just to make sure I'm clear on this and the public is, the benefit of the platform payment system is that instead of having to go through the front door, you can go through any of the doors.

And that means that the driver is no longer in charge of fare enforcement because they're not doing that.

Everyone can get on and off the bus, and so the way you prove that you paid your fare is not by the fact that you're on there.

It's if a fare enforcement officer comes by, use your ORCA card and they would scan that and see that you did scan on.

That's correct.

And so if you're a cash only you just still use the front door and pay by cash and you'd get your transfer.

That's right.

And so folks need to be aware if they're see everyone boarding on the back door but it's a route that normally hasn't done this that they need to remember to swipe on or they may encounter fair enforcement on that And I know you have a slide about fair enforcement shifting a little bit too.

Yep.

It's this one.

So the fair enforcement officers are going to be present there on 3rd Avenue to help transition customers.

They're not going to be expelling people from the buses right away.

We want to give people plenty of time to understand what the new system is.

Absolutely.

They did an event, a press event a couple of days ago, and the time saved is actually substantial.

So there was press coverage, you can check that out.

Great.

And so this set of investments, and these, my understanding is these, originally these scanning systems were supposed to be in place by the spring and summer, but they've been delayed a little bit because of some of the construction challenges.

Is that right?

Yep, that is exactly right.

There are a laundry list of issues why they aren't quite done by now, but Metro has agreed to have these human And so we have to make sure that all beings hold the handheld ORCA card readers so that folks can, we can get the benefit even without the infrastructure in place.

And so for PM rush hour, those people should be available to do that at the stops that don't have the readers.

Other times of day, they'll just still need to board by the front door.

That's exactly right.

The afternoon is when we have the most issues with variable travel times.

Metro and Sound Transit along with SDOT and WSDOT have done a lot of work to make sure that we have communicated not only with all the bus riders but also with all the other folks that are going to be impacted by these changes.

Everything from rider alerts and transit alerts, everybody has a blog and everybody has been cranking out the information all day, every day.

One of the things I do want to point out is that SDOT, WSDOT I don't know what my problem is today.

Sound Transit and Metro have street teams that are going to help folks in the tunnel understand what's going to happen, and I think those are starting later this week.

What SDOT and the Department of Neighborhoods are adding to that are some community liaisons that are going to be positioned at the bus stops that are impacted outside of downtown, and those resources will be able to communicate in language so we make sure we're capturing everyone.

Okay.

Like I mentioned, the 550, which is a sound transit route, is a workhorse east side route that brings thousands and thousands of people in each and every day.

That is going to come out of the tunnel, just like the other metro buses, and will take its place on the surface streets.

Right now, the joint operating condition in the tunnel creates some delays for light rail riders, and so having the buses take their place on the surface streets will actually improve reliability for light rail, and the transition will allow those light rail riders to enjoy six-minute headways, which is really exciting, and headways will continue to improve as the system expands.

This change right now is helping us get ready for light rail to Northgate as well as light rail to the east side.

So we are planning and looking forward to that.

Don't worry, WSDOT is still in town.

And removing the viaduct each and every day, munching and crunching away, That's going to be about six months worth of construction.

If you wander down to Columbia, you will see that the ramp, she is no longer there.

They're also working on filling and sealing the Battery Street Tunnel so they can do the decommission work.

That's going to take a couple of years.

Most of the work, though, especially in the early phase, is going to take place underground, so you won't notice that much.

In the latter part of the construction, there will be some impacts on Battery Street.

because they have to do the final filling from street side.

In addition, they're working hard on north surface street connections so that we can connect South Lake Union to uptown and have that operate better than it ever has.

So SDOT is doing many of the things that we did during the SR99 closure and with that same intensity, including real-time traffic signal monitoring and management.

We use data to improve how the system functions.

We're communicating with technology providers like Google and Waze to make sure that they understand what construction impacts they should not steer drivers into.

We're also proactively managing construction schedules so that we are keeping construction out of bus lanes for this time being.

We're not revoking any permits this time around.

In addition, you may have noticed right out in front of this building that we expanded the 5th Avenue bus-only lane.

Buses will turn on Marion and then again onto 6th, where there will be a p.m.

peak only bus-only lane.

We did some excellent work reaching out to the businesses along that corridor, and so I think we have everybody on board with what we need to do.

And Metro has their motor coaches doing training runs right now, so you can see them out there.

Great.

One slight edit, it's bus and bike, I believe.

And I've used the bike connections since it's been up.

Oh, great.

And it's a small change, but depending on where you're going from City Hall, it's proved to be a shorter route, so I appreciate that, too.

Excellent.

I love it.

And there's no buses on it at the moment, at least when I was there, so it's a really easy route to do, too.

OK, great.

In addition, we're continuing our very cohesive communication strategy with our agency partners.

We think that that's one of the things that made the SR 99 closure go just about as well as it could have.

One of the things that we're adding this time is a little bit of a campaign to help folks understand the options that they have to go shopping and eat.

at small businesses downtown, and then use transit to get to and from.

So that's a campaign that you'll start to see.

I think we launched it last week, so you'll start to see those bus sides coming up really soon.

Because it's always a pleasure to come and visit you, Councilmembers.

We have many opportunities for us to interact.

End of Joint Operations is coming right up, and we've already talked about the Battery Street Tunnel.

the North Surface Street connection as well as the demo.

Alaskan Way construction is going to start mid-year after demolition is done, so that's another big one for us.

And tolling, of course.

We're not quite sure when that's going to happen, but it's going to be late summer.

January, for about 10 weeks, Sound Transit is going to go to single track operation so they can complete some construction work.

That's going to be a little bit of a change and a little bit of a burden for folks who use the light rail in the tunnel.

But we're working on ways to mitigate that.

So many opportunities for us to interact with you as well as with the community.

One that I want to note that is a new addition to this timeline is you may have heard that the Port of Seattle is planning to add a cruise ship terminal to And that's scheduled to come online in 2022. So there are lots of circulation issues down there.

So we want to make sure that we have lots of time to work with them to sort those out.

Can you, the single tracking through the tunnel for sound transit, did you say January 2020?

January 2020, for 10 weeks.

For 10 weeks, okay.

That'll be significant when it gets here.

Councilman Johnson?

Yeah, I mean, you know, we, It's a complicated set of construction because of the nature of needing to bring East Link into the existing transit tunnel, which will soon be called the Light Rail Tunnel, and wanting to do that construction before the Northgate Link opens.

So for that 10-week period in the International District, if your destination is the International District, you're going to be able to get on and off pretty easily.

But if you're on a train going from the airport all the way to UW, you're going to have to walk across a platform to board another train to then continue back.

So there's going to be a complicated nature there for 10 weeks or so and a little less than a year.

But it allows for us to do all that construction now in advance of the 2023 opening of Link to the east side without disrupting service to Northgate just after it opened.

That's exactly right.

Twice as many trains in there, we won't have the disruption.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And Sound Transit actually planned this very carefully, not just with respect to opening up Northlink and Link to East.

The east side, they also wanted to wedge it in between two big sports seasons so that that wouldn't be too much of a disruption.

So they put a lot of planning into that, and now is the time when SDOT and King County Metro need to come together with Sound Transit to make some mitigation plans.

Let's see, is that the last slide we were going to go through?

It is.

So we included on the agenda also the near-term action plan report, so we appreciate that.

There's not a presentation necessarily associated with that, but we have copies of it here and folks in the public can look at that.

Yeah, we can also answer some questions if you have questions.

Great, I would love that.

So I wanted to just get an update on some of the bike projects downtown.

for a refresher for those in the audience that haven't been tracking it or those watching on TV.

We brought some backup slides.

Oh, excellent.

Great.

It's the pocket slides.

Excellent.

The bike community has been advocating for a number of years to make sure that we have safe connections in the most dense part of our city, downtown.

And of course, that's the place where our right of way is the most constrained, and there's so much demand for it.

And after a couple of years of some success on pieces of projects, but frustration that they weren't all connected.

Last year, the city council passed a resolution unanimously supporting and committing the city from a policy perspective to completing this basic bike network by the end of this year.

And I really appreciate the collaboration with SDOT, both with my office and council members, but more importantly with the bike advocacy community, because I know you all have worked very closely with them, including taking us out and walking and biking different aspects to see You know, this is not the only thing happening in the city right now, as you've highlighted, and so how it integrates with some of the other projects.

So my understanding is that generally things are still on track based on that resolution, but I wanted to just take a few minutes to walk through some of the specific projects and get an update.

And where there are, you know, hiccups that we are anticipating or things we already know, it'd be great to air those right now so we can talk about them.

Great, thank you.

We did bring a few backup slides, and just to set the context for the One Center City near-term action plan, it contained three bicycle facilities in it, in addition to many other strategies related to keeping transit moving, like the 5th 6th Transit Pathway we just talked about, and the all-door boarding on 3rd Avenue.

as well as other types of enhancements we'll be putting in place this year and over the next couple of years to make the pedestrian and transit passenger experience better than it is today.

So it represents a joint $30 million investment that the City of Seattle, King County Metro, and Sound Transit are making together.

There were three bicycle facilities in the near-term action plan, a protected bike lane on Pike and or Pine, The next phase of that, which will be between 6 and Bellevue, has a target completion date at the end of this year, December 2019. And then the south end connection from the end of the 2nd Avenue bike lane down towards Dearborn, also has a target completion date of December 2019. Both of those projects face, they're very complicated projects, and they're happening in a very complicated environment with both stakeholder issues, traffic operations issues, but we are moving forward on those.

The third project in the near-term action plan was the 4th Avenue PBL, and our target there is to have the design complete this year, and we're on schedule for that.

And Jim Curtin, who knows way more about bicycle facilities than I do, is here as well to help provide some additional information.

Great.

I'd be happy to jump in.

I think, you know, starting with on the north end of town, we had a breakthrough on 8th and 9th Avenue.

We have some good news there.

It looks like we're going to be able to get going out there in the third quarter of this year.

So that's fantastic progress.

Bell Street is on track to get started in the fourth quarter as well.

I think as Megan mentioned, we're looking at Pike and Pine getting going this year as well.

We do have some issues through the convention center construction site that we're working very closely with them to mitigate.

Could be that we have to ramp people up onto the sidewalks.

We're looking at all potential solutions through that construction zone, which obviously we want to be extra sensitive and thorough to whatever we put on the ground out there.

Great, and so on that one.

Jim, you saw the presentation at our last committee meeting from some of the work that the Capitol Hill Eco-Village, or Capitol Hill Eco-District, had led on.

And my understanding, there's been ongoing conversation with some of the design elements of that connection, which I really appreciate community members doing that.

The Convention Center, obviously a pretty big project, a big chunk of real estate.

And so my expectation is that we continue to work that as best we can.

You know, traffic impacts are going to be traffic impacts.

I think a frustration that has happened in past around construction is that it feels like pedestrians and bikes often don't get the same level of where are we supposed to go during construction?

And so I know you've heard that.

So hopefully, as we figure this out, making it the safest, most convenient as possible, recognizing that there'll probably be some things that aren't quite ideal, but just having some transparency about where folks are going to be able to go.

And hopefully, that doesn't hold up the rest of the connection.

Even though the whole network won't be totally complete because of that construction piece, getting those other pieces on the ground, I think, will be important.

Yeah, I think we're ready to move forward with the roughly Bellevue to Broadway section, no matter what.

And we'd like to do it all together.

It's just a matter of making sure we get that coordination done and get a thoughtful, safe facility out there for folks.

Great.

Thank you.

I interrupted, so continue with your way south.

For the south end connection, our big hang up there is some metro layover spaces on Main Street.

So we're working very closely with them to develop a design.

We think we've had a breakthrough there as well.

So long as that keeps moving forward, we're going to be on track for that as well.

And then the one that I'd bring up would be 12th Avenue.

I think as one of our public commenters, Clara, mentioned, that segment between Yesler and King does look like it is going to be very difficult for us to build a bike facility.

And we have looked and modeled conditions there.

The operations at that intersection are already set up to move transit through the area, particularly some of the routes that are serving the Rainier Valley, but also the streetcar as well.

There's a lot going on at that intersection.

It's basically where Bourne and Rainier meets, also 12th Avenue.

And, of course, Yesler as well.

However, we do have another segment on 12th just south of there that will make a nice connection, which would be 12th Avenue between King and Gulf.

Gulf is the very south end of the Dr. Jose Rizal Bridge.

This is a segment that would connect to existing facilities on Beacon Hill.

It would pick off one of our high crash locations for bicyclists as well at the south end of the bridge.

and provide what we're hoping for, a very nice protected bike lane up to King Street, which would connect to the King Street neighborhood greenway, where people could head west through the CID and into the downtown as well.

So there's a lot of work to be done around that one as well.

And, you know, we're hopeful that we can get a nice connected network built as soon as possible here.

On the connection between King and Yesler on Long 12th, I would love to find an opportunity to have some kind of more technical conversations with some community members to really understand what some of those challenges are.

Sometimes I know that there's like policy tradeoffs, you know, what are we prioritizing over something else?

And so if there's things like that that need to be contemplated, it'd be really good to just highlight what those are.

Sometimes there's just specific technical challenges or constraints with, you know, whatever it is, a streetcar or something that it's just not going to work.

So making sure everyone understands what's in the place and what is what.

And it may be useful to do a little walking tour out there too.

But why don't we loop back with some of the community, the bike community members, and figure out how we can have that conversation and see if there aren't some maybe creative ideas that haven't been able to been fully vetted yet that we can explore.

Or at a minimum, make sure that everyone understands where everyone else is coming from.

so that we can move forward, at least with a shared understanding, even if we're still not in agreement there.

That sounds terrific.

Yeah.

Thanks, Jim.

There are some other things in this action report, too, that talked about, as you mentioned, it's not just about bike investments to make this safe.

And so I really appreciate some of the transportation demand management tools.

I mean, a lot of this stuff is not about concrete or wires or anything.

It's really about sharing information.

And I don't know if there's anything in here you all want to highlight about what's going on, but it was great to read through the report.

I would just like to say, and maybe Megan has something to note too, that you're, we absolutely concur with that.

One of the things that got us through the SR 99 closure, no doubt, was people deciding to flex their commute a little earlier or a little later or work from home one day a week.

All of those things that sort of fall under the heading of transportation demand management were absolutely critical to the success that we had.

And we really appreciate the entire community sort of hearing that clarion call that your commute choices are more than about your own commute and your own convenience, that there's a shared responsibility there and that there's a community impact that all of our individual choices make.

Yeah, anything else to highlight that you want to touch on in here?

Just a couple things that are upcoming.

For the September metro service change, in preparation for that, we'll be making improvements at the International District Chinatown Station.

And again, these are to expand bus waiting areas and passenger amenities, wayfinding for people that are making connections there.

There'll also be improvements at the Montlake Triangle to help bus riders make the connection to light rail more easily there, so changing where the buses pull into the station, as well as making some accessibility improvements.

So in our next quarterly report, we can provide additional information about those, but those are some of the next big things we're looking at.

I'm looking at Councilmember Johnson here, because you might know better than me.

But is there a route from the east side that is going to be truncated and go to Husky Stadium instead of downtown?

That'd be nice.

There is.

The route 255 is under evaluation for truncation.

But not at this change?

That decision will be made by the King County Council in advance of that service change.

Got it.

And then just to remind everyone out there who happens to be paying attention, there's only a handful of routes.

There are a lot of buses and a lot of people, but a handful of routes that are currently in the bus tunnel.

And obviously, those are no longer going to be in the bus tunnel.

And so if folks wander down, I assume that folks that are riding those commutes every day should be well aware of this by now and know exactly where to go.

I hope that folks are doing that work so that they know that.

For folks that are just the occasional rider and just every once a month go down and catch the 41 to Northgate, they're going to show up down there and be like, huh, something's changed.

Where are they going to get information about where to catch the 41?

Will that be just go to their schedule or app or are there going to be signs up in the bus tunnels that explain that?

There will be signs up.

There will also be There will be people there that help people get where they need to go.

And will those folks be there for a few weeks?

They'll be there for at least a week, and that'll catch most of the commuters, and then the signage will stay after that.

And then obviously, you touched on this too, even if you're on a bus route that's not in the tunnel, It's possible some of those routes are changing the route they're on to make room for some of the buses coming out of the tunnel.

That's exactly right.

And so those folks may not have been paying attention because they might think it may not matter and may show up on Monday.

well, Monday morning, hopefully it won't matter, but Monday afternoon when they're heading home, be like, wait a minute, my bus isn't coming here, what happened?

And so again, for next week, will there be individuals on the routes, on the surface streets, too, helping direct people?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Absolutely.

And the slides you went through, I appreciate the details of highlighting which routes are getting redirected, so folks want to follow that and Metro's information.

And folks can visit Seattle.gov slash traffic or Metro's Get Ready website for more information about that.

Great.

So thanks.

So public, once again, we're calling on you and we'll be doing this a few more times before the year's out to really pay attention, be flexible, be patient.

And Heather, I appreciate the comment you made that, you know, the decisions we all make impact everyone else too, so.

For those of us that do have some flexibility We're trying to produce as many options for people to consider.

We're trying to make you as aware of those options And really help appreciate the business community really helping and being flexible with the different shift hours and things like that, too So that's been great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anything else Councilmember?

Next agenda item.

Yes agenda item number two.

This is an information item related to the shoreline street ends update.

Welcome.

Hello.

How are you all doing?

Great.

Doing good.

Always exciting to hear about these wonderful street ends that, in some cases, feel like they've disappeared and are reemerging as an asset to the community.

So why don't we start with a round of introductions.

Karen, you want to just give us your name?

I'm Karen Daubert, co-chair and founder of Friends of Street Ends.

Great to be here.

I'm Angela Steele, the public safety manager for the Department of Transportation.

I'm Omar Akari.

I'm also in public space management.

I'm the Shrewdian's program coordinator.

And I'm Marty Oppenheimer, and I've been involved in Friends of Shrewdian since the 1990s.

Thank you all for being here.

I have a presentation, so do you want to just jump in?

I'm going to kick it off and just wanted to give you a brief overview of the shoreline street end program per the request of Councilmember O'Brien and just highlight that the shoreline street end is a unique program in the street use division of SDOT and it provides opportunities for public access to shorelines that abut public right-of-way.

And Omar is going to go and present the details of the program.

And then we're going to hand it over to Karen to give an overview of the Friends of Shoreline Street Inn group.

Great.

Thank you.

So I'd like to start off with a little bit of a connection to how Shoreline Street Inn is tying to SDOT's overall mission.

Basically, Shoreline Street Inn's program forwards SDOT's values by connecting people to our beautiful waterfronts and making a more vibrant city overall.

So by the end of this presentation, I'm hoping you guys know a little bit more about the program.

It's a very small program.

Most of you probably haven't heard of this.

So what is the Shoreline Street End?

A little bit of background information, the history, and also the mission vision of our specific program, and some of the program elements as well.

So what is a shoreline street end?

It's basically a council designation portion of right-of-way that extends from the ordinary high watermark all the way to the next adjacent intersection.

And so it is right-of-way that SDOT controls, and it's typically 40 to 60 feet wide.

We have some that are up to 100 feet wide as well.

I don't know how you start making a city, but I assume eons ago, someone platted the whole city, and these things were just put down on a grid, and they connected the dots, and what was left between was land we could sell, but then they evolved in different places in different neighborhoods, is that?

I see some nodding, roughly.

The state platted the right way back in the day, and those potentially could have been served as potential ferry stops, or just...

The Mosquito Fleet served at some of these sites as well, so there's kind of a mismatch of different reasons and usages.

But these are especially precious because there's so few sites in the city where we have access to the water, because the way state laws work, it's quite privatized.

In most cases, you don't own the shoreline.

It's a private owner who owns the shoreline, and the tide land's adjacent.

So that's kind of why this program exists.

and also state law.

So the policy choices we make around these are basically to provide physical access or views to the shoreline.

Not all shorelines you can get physical access because of, you know, topography or other constraints.

But that's the idea is to provide that access as the primary priority.

We also provide permits at these sites.

That's also what funds our program.

So we try to balance those permits with access as well.

So where are these sites?

We actually have a GIS map as well.

You can kind of dive into this a little closer to find out where they are in your community.

But the map on this image kind of gives you a rough idea where they're scattered across the city.

Most of them are concentrated along the waterways within our city, both north and south, and along Lake Union.

There's also others scattered throughout the city as well.

And so just to be clear, does each of those dots represent essentially public access?

It may have had some improvements, or it may be inaccessible because of BlackBerrys or something like that today?

There's potential for public access, but some sites are fully permitted or industrial uses.

So our maritime uses are part of that use in theory, but still our main priority is public access.

This is the inclusive of everything in there, including ones that are currently under permit that may have not public access.

Some that may have, like some of the slides earlier where we've seen some improvements to make it easy for public access, and others that are just kind of in limbo at the moment.

Right, yeah.

And so if you actually find our GIS map on the Shoreline Students website under Public Space Management, it actually says, is it worth a visit or not?

And that's kind of our rough indicator of like, do you want to check it out?

Got it.

Yeah.

So backing up a little bit, so the program was created in 1996 through a council action.

It also set policy as well, and there were originally 149 Shoreline Street ends.

And since then, we've had some policy updates and some changes to the program.

It's a director rule, kind of more nuanced changes.

But most recently, we've added a Shoreline Street end program coordinator position.

Hello, that's me.

I'm pretty excited about that.

And also, we've done some work plan items in 2017 prior to my getting hired that kind of evaluated all the sites across the city.

So we took photos.

We sent an intern to all these locations to kind of check them out and see what the status was, were there encroachments, were there not.

And also, an assessment was done to figure out what sites we should be tackling first based on like an index.

So a little more kind of a scientific approach to taking it, looking at what's important to us in this community.

So the mission and vision of this program, let me get caught up here one sec, is that Shoreline Street Inns are precious community assets that thrive through robust community partnerships, and that our mission is to improve public access and protect unique views, enhance habitat, support maritime industry, and foster stewardship throughout these sites and across the community.

So we're going to dive into some of the program elements here.

Kind of give you a flavor of the day what we end up doing in the program to kind of support these sites.

One of the primary things we do is encourage adjacent property owners to remove their encroachments if they aren't currently permitted.

And if appropriate, we guide them towards gaining a permit for their uses.

So if there's not a community interest in developing the site for access at that time, and we feel it's appropriate to grant a permit, we do.

Once those permits are given, they're a yearly kind of renewal fee.

And we inspect those sites every year as well to make sure they're staying within the bounds that they're paying for.

And then those fees, once collected, help fund program management, basically, and improvements at these sites.

And so are those permits then revocable, or they can be non-renewed in a year?

So as our capacity shifts, or community interest shifts, or whatever it is, if someone decides, like, hey, next year we'd like to redevelop this site to create better access, we're not locked in or locked out in this case?

Correct.

Great.

And in the photo, you show an encroachment in case it looks like a some industrial use where they're just storing materials there.

And is that typically, or I imagine that in more residential areas, there's people that maybe over time, various property owners have either inadvertently or intentionally kind of re-landscaped and assumed use of that public right-of-way.

Is that also an encroachment?

Yeah, those are the two typical types of encroachments we see is either expansion of backyards or material storage are the main ones we see.

Okay.

Yeah.

Great.

And so we'll permit either of those again if there's no better demand for it.

Or superseding like community project coming in.

FOSS has projects coming up where there's existing encroachments and so we're going to work with the property owner adjacent to make sure that you know, the plan either works with the encroachments or if we want to, we can kind of scale back those encroachments depending on, you know, what's needed.

And I'd add that there's some good examples on the north side of the ship canal in Ballard where the adjacent industry has taken over and it's a public safety problem.

So they are paying a permit and that permit goes straight then into the fund.

Great, got it.

And I might add that historically under the engineering department prior to SDOT, the attitude from the city seemed to be the adjacent property owners are responsible for the shoreline street.

And if they want to privatize it, they can privatize it.

If they want to let the public in, they can let the public in.

And that's what changed in the 90s.

Got it.

We shifted to a more proactive role saying, no, this is a public good and we will collectively define it.

And that may change the user.

It may not.

But we're going to be proactive in that.

So with that funding base being solely on permits, it's obvious that with.

encroachments being removed, the program funding removes, or lessons, I should say.

But that means that we can sort of rely on our partnerships more in that instance.

But the point is that we're going to be working together with the community to do improvements and also seeking grant funding to kind of leverage the dollars we do have coming in, which are, I think, significant currently.

But we're still trying to plan for the future is basically the intent.

We're going to talk a little bit about the improvements.

SDOT and our community partners both do improvements.

Last year in 2018, we did three projects all kind of packaged together on the north and south sides of the First Avenue South Bridge and also East Allison Street.

You can kind of see in the top right here image that some of the really fun seating that was installed by an artist and some of the other improvements and bollards to kind of keep cars out of the right-of-way.

Street and I should say So we also have worked with many other community partners so a green Seattle partnership to help us with Warsaw Street They're continuing to do Restoration efforts there over the next couple years and East Highland Drive friends of street ends did a great job partnering with treats for Seattle And we'll show you some images of that later in a second.

University of Washington and their landscape architecture program developed 11th Avenue Northwest.

I showed you some images of that earlier during the mission and vision slide.

We can back up if you're curious about it.

And in 2014, we partnered with Parks to do a bunch of different projects associated with the park's levy that went through at that time.

And so to give you kind of a flavor of what SDOT projects typically look like, this is the Allison Street end that was developed last year.

And it has some of the more heavy improvements that community members can't necessarily put in.

So it's concrete and railing, steps down to the water, some bollards, new parking.

Basically, you can kind of see in the before and after, the main difference is it looks like a public space.

And that's the type of improvements we're trying to do.

We're not trying to create a super high maintenance park in these instances, but we're just trying to create that access and what's needed for the space to get it to look more public.

That's great.

That's one I happened to stumble across in the last year, both the before and after.

And it's a great improvement.

I appreciate the bike racks there.

I actually got a chance to use them.

It's a nice one in District 4.

And so probably running out of time a little bit, but so ESSA also has some future projects coming up at McGraw Street, which was originally a park project.

are going to try to put a new railing and steps down to the water.

It's got a little bit of a steep slope right now, so we're trying to clean that up.

And on 6th Avenue West, we have a new Schrodinger Street opening up.

This is kind of a long past project, so I'm sure some community members may have heard of this already.

But it's coming back around again, and we're trying to get it off the ground in 2020.

And is it, when you say you're trying, is it like capacity, like you can only be in so many places at once, or is it like funding, or is it like coordinating 18 city agencies, it just takes longer?

That last one, so coordination.

So we actually had a couple different staff members kind of turn over, and so we lost a little bit of momentum.

And also just the fact that I'm picking it up now and getting under it, it takes a little while to get shoreline permits, and this is a big enough project that it's We're not sure if it will get an exemption or not yet, but we're hoping it will.

So there's some legal technical stuff we have to work out too.

Yeah.

So some of our partners also have some pretty big projects coming up as well.

FOSS, or sorry, Friends of Shirlane Street Ends, no acronyms up here, has got a project coming up April 27th at East Prospect Street, 9 a.m., if you guys want to come out there and help us.

There's a sign up on a Trees for Seattle website.

If you want to help us clean up that site, there's a lot of blackberry at that location.

Similar types of improvements also coming up at East Olive Way and East Pine Street.

With Friends of Street Ends, they do some great work out there.

I'm sure they're going to talk about more later.

So also, Seattle Public Utilities has two pump stations that they're redoing.

So they have a retrofit at 22nd, which is Kramer Street.

This year, they're going to be starting construction.

And in 2020, in South Park, they're installing a new pump station near the 7th Avenue, or yeah, pump station.

So that's also been long anticipated, and it's finally arriving.

And so that's an opportunity where public access and serving a utility need can coexist in the same street end.

Yeah.

It's going to be great.

They're going to be maintaining the site for us.

So that's one of those partnerships where whoever is at the site, we're trying to have that department take care of those locations just to save the citizens money so we don't have two crews going to the same locations.

So we've talked about all these different partnerships and it's important that we've been able to work with each of them to develop sites.

We can't, as an organization, pull off big projects all the time.

So we try to work with community groups, business organizations, friends of street ends, and our internal partners with parks, SPU, and the port to pull off projects.

And the images following here are just a quick run through of what the types of projects our partners pull off.

So this is East Highland Drive.

This was a fantastic project.

done a couple years ago, where they took a kind of a bramble and opened it up so you could actually see views of the water.

This is adjacent to Lake Washington.

And you can kind of see the before and after here.

You could not even tell that the shore was behind there other than that nice little blue sign.

But afterwards, the water opens up before you.

And they installed some really great native landscape.

And completely community, basically, installed.

So this is the type of work we like to see.

That's amazing.

I mean, obviously.

If you were driving by the first one, you have no clue that there was any reason to pull in there.

And the second one, it just invites you in, which is great.

And there's a nice gravel beach down there, too.

So it's nice.

So this is that McGraw Street I mentioned earlier that was one of those initial parks projects, part of the levee.

And so this is one we're hoping to install a little bit safer pathway down to the water at a railing.

And so this is an example of a business owner coming in and proposing a project to us.

And C and Short Construction did a great job here opening up the landscape at 28th Avenue, Northwest and Ballard.

And so tell me a little bit more about that.

So the business owner.

Wanted to kind of just improve the sites make it look better for Customers and employees to enjoy too and a public benefit or just that was actually the second time that he had done that site Seen sure wanted the site developed and it was kind of Sloping into the water and not doing much so they developed it ten years ago twelve years ago put in benches one of the problems because of the proximity to the rail line there is people were sleeping on the benches and So they took out the benches, and then they redeveloped the entire site with SDOT, and the business owner paid for the development, and it's a public park.

That is stewardship, isn't it?

Yeah.

That's really cool.

And so, good segue.

So we're going to talk a little bit about stewardship.

So about a third of our sites are currently maintained by the community.

And so without them, we could not get to the level of service that we need.

throughout the community.

We partner with SPU's Tree Ambassador Program and the Green Seattle Partnership also to increase the amount of stewardship.

SPU and Seattle, or SDOT, basically have crews that come out and will help kind of pick up material that dropped off by volunteers.

And that helps greatly expand the amount of capacity that our community volunteers have.

And they also have tool trailers that drag out, too, to help these restorations go a lot further.

That's it?

That's it.

All right.

Last slide.

Well, thank you very much for having us here and our goal today was just to inform you and citizens about the value of these incredible public spaces.

I was involved in co-founding Friends of Street Ends and it was almost 25 years ago and at that time about 20% of these amazing places were open for public access and And over the course of the years now, 50% are just really welcoming, beautiful places.

About 20% have the permits so that you cannot go in.

And then about 30% still are the low-hanging fruit is gone, so more complicated, but lots of opportunity.

And you kind of go, why?

Why are we spending so much time?

Why are we interested in these places?

Well, indeed.

In the late 1800s, when our city was platted, streets just simply dead-ended on bodies of water, Lake Washington, Lake Union, the Ship Canal, the Duwamish, Puget Sound.

And when you visit these places, and I really encourage people to do so, you just value our water.

It's so amazing.

We're right here on Puget Sound, yet how often do you actually smell the saltwater?

Well, you can do that at these amazing places.

And there's many things that make these things so positive and a joy to work on.

But I got to say the partnership with SDOT is absolutely key.

And having Omar on board, having the funding that keeps that position ongoing is critical.

And then Angela and Elise also.

It's always a challenge, especially when you go in and open these up for the first time.

There's a fear from adjacent property owners that, oh, other people are going to come.

But as soon as these are opened, they're basically used by people in the immediate neighborhoods, walk their dog, meet their meet their friends, meet their neighbors.

And so it's always worthwhile.

When we sat down in December with Council Member O'Brien, he immediately went to the math.

And there's some math involved in this.

And this program is supported by the private permits that are paid for encroachments.

And our overall goal is eventually there's no encroachments.

These are all completely open for public access.

Well, there's one unique street end, and the adjacent property owners pay up to $100,000 a year.

This is based on the value of the adjacent property for the use of this low bank, beautiful waterfront.

And their long-term goal is to remove the encroachments and no longer pay that money.

So that means $100,000, which is a very high percentage of the fund, will no longer be available.

So in the long term, the ask is really pretty small in terms of a city budget, but approximately $100,000 in deficit will be because We were successful, but on the other hand, that ended up being less money.

So that's something that we ask the council to be thinking about in the future.

And then Marty Oppenheimer has been working on this both in south end of Lake Washington and in the ship canal.

So Marty.

My wife and I live on South Willow Street in Seward Park.

And we're the troublemakers who opened South Willow Street.

Some neighbors loved us for it, and some neighbors hated us for it.

And Willow Street is amazing because we get all kinds of people coming down there all year round, even in the rain.

There's a lot of Orthodox Jewish families in the neighborhood.

They walk down there on Sabbath.

There are Asian kids who walk down.

There are black kids who walk down.

And we don't have any trouble.

No matter what happens, mixing of people, There's no trouble there.

I'm also involved in South Park, where my business is, and we're trying to open Shoreline Street and in South Park.

The 7th Avenue pump station site is one that we had looked at for a long time, and it's wonderful that we're working with SBU in opening that now, because there was no good way for the community to open it.

If you've been to South Park, you may have seen the gear park that the port opened, which is also a street end.

And then the port and SDOT and parks connected that across South Riverside into a much larger park area.

So the partnerships that make these things work are great.

My wife and I are the stewards of South Willow Street.

And you will find that lots of people who live adjacent to street ends or not adjacent to street ends become the stewards and keep things going.

And we do, we tend to do cleanup and we rely on SDOT to help us on the bigger jobs.

Well, I really appreciate your collective work over decades to really bring these public assets back into the public eye.

And I appreciate the folks at SDOT that are doing that too.

I also appreciate highlighting that these are not without controversy.

But it's, from my perspective at least, it's the absolutely right thing we should be doing.

And we can be smart and we can be considerate of neighbors.

And this is a public right-of-way, it's public access.

If folks don't want to live there, they can choose to sell their property and move somewhere else.

And they shouldn't be fearful of visitors.

And there's plenty of examples around the city and around the world where folks from different walks of life interact in ways, and water is a draw for folks to do that, and really positive things come out of that.

And so I'm really grateful for that work and I want to make sure that we're supporting this going forward too.

So Karen, an estimate on the timeline of when that one particular encroachment may be unencumbered, how many months or years do we think we have till that changes?

We thought it was going to be within the next six months and it sounds like they backed off.

So we're looking at probably, I'm looking at you Omar, probably about a year or two.

It might be that.

They've done this to us before, honestly.

But they do have, I think, permits now going forward.

And they have developed a landscape plan, which is further than they've ever gone before.

So we're staying on top of it, checking in.

But they said for sure for this year, they're going to be paying their full fee.

So I'd say that average members of our community who are out exploring and stumble across a place like this would call this a, oh, what a cool little park at the end.

But these are technically, in many cases, not run by the Parks Department.

But they are the type of open space that we want to cultivate and nurture.

And so internally at the city, we'll have to figure out how we find that right funding and who's the right steward of it at the city and where that money goes.

But I think from a public's perspective, in my mind at least, this is the type of investment in access and open space that we largely do through our parks department, but do in a number of other places.

And I think it's appropriate for us to dedicate some general fund revenue to make sure that These continue to be maintained and the ultimate goal, you know, maybe some of the industrial areas, it's going to be critical for business operations to stay and it may not be appropriate for people to be swimming next to a shipyard, I don't know.

But in large part, it'd be great to do what that one property owner is doing and return these all to the public access, which means we will need an ongoing funding stream to do that.

You know, the Metropolitan Parks District levy is up for renewal.

I don't know if that's technically allowed to blend money there or not, but those are a variety of places where we might want to look to see if we want to include that and figure things out going forward.

And then I just add that if people are interested in moving forward, working with us on that, and us being an all-volunteer group, Friends of Street Ends, our website is available online, and there's a link to SDOT's website.

And SDOT has a great map, so if they're out and about, they can just go on and discover if this street end is indeed public.

Well, there's a lot of people in town that have a lot of energy.

A lot of these folks are highly skilled in engineering and landscape architects.

And as you mentioned, the easy ones have been converted.

But the challenging ones, you know, a lot of people who like a challenge.

And so an invitation out there for folks who want to look at the map online or physically.

highlight something they want to take on for generations to come would be great.

Or a lower threshold would just be why don't you set a summer or fall project to pick a couple of these and just go visit them with your friends and family and check them all out.

Because it's great for more and more people to just be aware of them and use them.

That's also a benefit to all of us to know they're being used and loved.

Exactly.

Great.

Well, thanks for your work, and I'm committed to figuring out how I can help make sure that the work continues for decades to come, too.

Thank you.

Thank you both.

All right, Jasmine, public hearings.

We have a little presentation, and then we'll jump into the public hearing.

This is an information item related to proposed comprehensive plan amendments relating to transportation impact fees in a public hearing.

All right, Ketil, when you're seated, I'll let you introduce yourself, and you have a few slides, I believe, to run through, and then we'll open the public hearing.

Maybe before we start, first of all, Council Member Herbold, thank you for joining us.

I want to be clear about what we are doing today and what we're not doing today.

This is not legislation about transportation impact fees directly, but a requirement for a jurisdiction to implement a transportation impact fee is that there is a project list as part of their comprehensive plan.

And so the city needs to take a step of a transportation project list for the comprehensive plan before they can proceed to do legislation.

We're not actually adopting the transportation project list today either because our effort to do that has been challenged.

through, I think, SEPA authority.

And so that's going to the hearing examiner in June.

But we had noticed this for a public hearing, so we're going to go ahead and do the public hearing today, recognizing that it's still at least a few months away before we will take action on a comprehensive plan update to incorporate the list, which needs to happen before we actually do legislation to actually implement transportation impact fees.

So this is like step, I don't know what number it is, in a multi-step process, and there's a lot of steps coming after that.

And a quick question.

So the public hearing should be, the testimony about the public hearing is more about whether or not these are the right project lists, not about...

That's the action we're taking.

There's three people signed up, and so we'll hear what they talk about, but I imagine folks may want to talk about...

We would never constrain people from talking about what they want to talk about.

We might hear what, like, I don't like this thing on the project list, but I suspect we might hear more just about the general.

of transportation impact fees.

Thanks.

So Kilo.

All right.

So I have a few slides here that I'll run through.

A lot of this covers ground that you just covered, Council Member O'Brien, so this should be pretty quick.

But this is in some ways picking up where things left off back in November of last year.

But just to remind folks about the legislative history, in 2014, the council amended the mayor's proposed budget, so for the 2015 budget, to add appropriation authority for development of an impact fee program During the Murray administration, that work progressed to a point.

There was an identification and a recommendation on which types of impact fees to pursue and even development of some portions of an impact fee program.

The council docketed consideration of impact fees for consideration in 2018 and August of 2017. And then in October of last year, the council prepared a bill amending the comprehensive plan to add a project list for transportation impact fees and that The threshold determination for that bill was appealed to the city hearing examiner, and the hearing examiner is going to take that up in June.

So what does state law require of jurisdictions that implement a transportation impact fee?

What has to go into the comprehensive plan?

What essentially has to go into the comprehensive plan is a description of deficiencies, and this is actually not an LOS standard that we're using here for deficiencies.

using something called an existing system value methodology, and also a project list.

So a list of projects that remedy the deficiencies that have been identified.

So we'll walk through what is in the bill more or less.

So the bill sets out the existing system value approach to identifying deficiencies, and that essentially is an approach whereby the jurisdiction quantifies the value of existing infrastructure.

So it comes up with the replacement cost of existing infrastructure.

It determines essentially a cost which an impact fee cannot exceed.

And that cost is essentially the value of the existing infrastructure divided by the number of current PM peak hour trips.

And then as part of the deficiency analysis, the jurisdiction of what we're proposing to do here would be determining the cost of capacity improvements.

This is not actually in the conference plan amendments, but this would be a future step.

the cost of capacity improvements per person trip by dividing the total cost of impact fee eligible costs associated with the project list, which I'll go through in a minute, with future person trips.

Colleagues, there's going to be a quiz on this in a moment, so I hope you're tracking the whole steps.

I remember you broke this down for me a couple months ago, but it's pretty complex.

How does this methodology differ from, I think this is based on Portland and Oakland's approach, how does it differ from

Washington state jurisdictions, but there are some some Washington jurisdictions actually use this methodology as well.

I think Kirkland uses methodology It's what I understand from our consultant But it differs from sort of a more traditional approach where there may be a level of service standard associated with a particular facility And the impact fee would be designed to bring that level of service up to a level service, C, B, or A, from a level of service, F.

And so that would be something, a classical improvement would be something like road widening to achieve something like that.

So the project list, this is mostly what the comprehensive plan bill would do, would add a list of projects to the comprehensive plan and derive from a few sources here.

Current CIP projects.

Modal plans so modal plan implementation is a key driver and selection of projects for the project list and also move Seattle vision projects so projects that Are not necessarily funded by move Seattle, but were identified through the move Seattle planning process for future investments In my memory there are specific projects that are allowed to be funded through impact fees and some that are prohibited and

You briefly went through I think what some of those are but are Does this list include projects that are?

only projects that are eligible for funding from impact fees or would this require blended funding from other sources and Impact fees could be one of those sources.

Can you tell me a little bit?

So these projects would all qualify for expenditures with impact fees so They'd be improvements in the right-of-way that primarily benefit all modes of travel.

So they're not necessarily things like roadway widening, things like that.

What I just mentioned is sort of an example for us.

What one may think of for a classic impact-free program is not what's contemplated here.

They're more in the nature of things like complete street improvements.

So improvements to within the right-of-way that benefit transit as well as pedestrians and bikes and auto, too.

And we feel like we're on strong footing to Council Member Herbold's point, but there are other local jurisdictions in Washington State that are using this methodology to make these kinds of multimodal improvements with their impact fee dollars.

We do, yes.

So, moving on to the list here.

So, as I mentioned, there are a fair number of complete street projects that exist in the current capital improvement program.

Some are derived from a variety of different sources, but there are also some projects here that implement things like the Freight Master Plan.

The project list also includes modal plan implementation, so the Bike Master Plan, Pedestrian Master Plan, and Freight Master Plan.

I'll be showing you a map in a minute that does not reflect all of the potential investments that could be made for these modal plan implementation projects.

And then there are the Move Seattle Vision projects, which are sort of longer term and also broader in scope.

And these also include complete street projects, which is the Aurora Avenue Complete Streets Project.

So where would these projects be located?

Let's see here.

Here's a map that is a somewhat better version of what it is.

It's the right direction.

It's the right direction.

It's great.

You can't really see much of it here.

But what you can, I think, see from this is that there is a pretty good distribution throughout the city.

So what you are mostly seeing reflected on this map are complete street projects and freight master plan implementation projects.

What's not shown here, because it would just be too busy to show, are the bi-compact master plan implementation projects.

And so this map, or something very similar to this map, would be included in the comprehensive plan.

Okay, great.

So that's more or less it, Council Member O'Brien.

As you mentioned, the comp plan amendments are a necessary but not sufficient step to implementing an impact fee program.

And so there'll be some future legislative decisions for the council to make, possibly in the third quarter of this year.

Great.

Colleagues, any questions for Ketel at this moment?

Well, I guess just regarding our ability to amend the comp plan again this year, can we do it?

So there are some exceptions to the limitation on comp plan amendments that we're exploring with the city attorney's office.

jurisdictions can amend the comprehensive plan when it's done concurrently with amendments to an adopted budget.

And so if the city were to adopt a transportation impact-free program, that would also include...

All these projects are in the budget.

Yeah, it would include changes to the capital improvement program and possibly also to some fund tables as well.

Okay.

Great.

Well, if there are no comments, I'll go ahead and open the public hearing.

We have three folks signed up today.

Alex Zimmerman's the first, and I don't see him here.

So that leaves Randy Banneker, you're next, and then Megan Kruse, you're after Randy.

And if there's anyone else in, you can queue up after Megan.

You'll have up to two minutes, Randy.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Councilmembers, Randy Banneker here on behalf of the Seattle-King County Realtors.

I want to talk just a little bit about nexus because impact fees are a lot about nexus, the idea that growth is paying for growth and you're fixing deficiencies where growth is creating new deficiencies.

One of the nexuses that gives us real concern about impact fees is that of the impact on housing affordability.

So yesterday you took bold moves on those up zones.

Impact fees add to the cost of market rate housing.

And they add in significant ways, depending on how and where you set those fees.

When those fees are financed, if you're going to charge that project developer at the early stages, those fees will be financed for the duration of that project coming out of the ground.

And then the purchaser of that market rate unit will be paying those fees as well.

So it has the perverse effect of really channeling added costs on the last person to show up in the neighborhood.

So I just ask you to think about that as you contemplate this concept.

The other thing is where we have impact fees in the region, The Growth Management Act created the allowance for local jurisdictions to impose impact fees because we were talking about jurisdictions that just hadn't had any built out prior.

They didn't have any facilities in place.

So if you look at impact fees in the City of Kirkland, City of Redmond, between those two cities, there's actually unincorporated King County that is not served by sewer.

So they have extension fees, things like that.

It's a different story in Seattle.

We front-ended.

We paid things forward.

And so if we need to fund transportation improvements, our request would be to continue to look at the tools that are a broader catchment in which everyone pays.

Thank you.

Thanks, Randy.

Megan?

Hi.

I wanted to make some comments and have some questions, hopefully could be answered.

First, this isn't going to pay for the growth that we have in Seattle.

Our streets can't hold the number of cars and vehicles we have on them right now, and we have to do something to fix that.

In listening to Ketel's presentation, my question about the methodology is how can it come up with correct values of existing infrastructure if we don't know the peak hour trips by TNCs?

As I mentioned earlier, I mean 17,500 trips every day in zip code 98101. It's immense and it's growing by 30% a year.

How will we capture all these fees that we need to keep infrastructure moving here if we only gauge it by LOS, single occupancy vehicles?

It's just not accurate and we have to expand that.

The project list should include things that aren't on these lists.

It should be things that the SDOT has been working on.

with regard to adequate loading berths, number and size and space, and alleys should be expanded.

If an alley can't be expanded because of an older building across the way from a new tower, it's got to take more than two feet.

Otherwise, we've got most of our alleys in downtown one lane only.

And, you know, the density that we're adding is just not going to be contained.

So this is all good, but it's not really working with realistic figures.

That's about it.

And if there's a way to answer the questions, that would be great.

I'd like to hear it.

I'm happy to talk to you afterwards.

Okay, thanks.

Great.

Thank you, Ketel.

Thanks, Megan and Randy, for being here.

Anyone else in the audience want to provide any testimony in the public hearing?

Great.

We'll go ahead and close the public hearing.

Colleagues, thanks for being here for that.

Ketel, thanks for your presentation.

Just I'll repeat one more time, it'll be sometime after the June hearing examiner hearing that we'll get a decision at which point we'll potentially be able to take action on this, but it's at least a few months away.

But I appreciate the feedback from both folks who showed up today to comment and look forward to more interactions to better understand as we craft a plan going forward.

We have one final agenda item.

Jasmine, do you mind reading that into the record?

Resolution 31873, a resolution recognizing the community-led visioning process and the recommendations found in the U District Station Area Mobility Plan and supporting a pedestrian-focused rebuild of Northeast 43rd Street.

And we have a presenter here today.

You do.

I am your presenter today, Council Member O'Brien.

I want to say thank you for making time on the agenda for me to come and talk to you about this important topic.

It's no problem.

It wasn't an inconvenience for you to be here.

No, no.

I was happy to attend.

Great.

Amy Gore is going to be staffing the slideshow for us, but I just wanted to give a little bit of context.

So, the University District is a place that's undergoing a lot of change.

Not only did we implemented the mandatory housing affordability program there, we also have the significant opening of the light rail station in 2016 at Husky Stadium and planned for 2021 for the U District Station.

We just adopted a new master plan for the University of Washington.

And it's a place that has had a lot of design work that preceded all of this.

It's also got a lot of great transportation connections and challenges coming, too, with the service revisions that we just talked about coming in place in September of this year, future service revisions when Northgate comes online in 2021, as well as some city-led projects like the Brooklyn and 43rd Street projects In the mix, Metro is also, of course, planning for two rapid ride lines, the Roosevelt Rapid Ride Line and the 45th Avenue Rapid Ride Line.

So in the face of all that change, the community came together and said, hey, rather than having four different jurisdictions come to us once every two months for the next six years and ask for our opinion on what they should do in the face of all this change, let us be a little proactive and pull together a proactive vision for mobility in the neighborhood so that we can then just insert your government's issues or questions here in the conversations that we've been having.

So if you'll move to the next slide, Amy.

It is a community-led process.

The U District Station Mobility Group has been funded by several of our partners, SDOT, DON, WSDOT, University of Washington, but also has been really active participants from folks like the Seattle Children's University of Washington U-District Partnership.

They hired some good folks from Makers and Fear and Peers to help lead through a series of focus groups and design charrettes towards getting an outcome.

And they have come to the council and asked us if we would bless this set of recommendations as part of the validation, I think, of the work that they did.

Not dissimilar from the presentation that we received a couple of weeks ago.

about the Capitol Hill Eco District.

So here's a little bit more about their existing conditions.

You can see high pedestrian counts on the ave, four of Seattle's top 20 challenging intersections, currently served by 16 bus routes with 193 buses per hour during rush hour.

A lot of traffic on 45th, as anybody can attest.

And a lot of growing bicycle facilities as we continue to build out our protective bike lane network out in D4.

And in order to get to this vision, our friends in the district did a whole lot of public engagement.

Walking tours, fair, the booths at the street fair, a couple years in a row, community workshops, surveys, presentations to the Ped and Transit Advisory Boards.

They did a transportation choices transit talk just on this topic.

And the design charrette I think that both you and your staff and me and my staff attended was very informative about some of the challenges that I think the community was asking our different governmental agencies to wrestle with.

One of those challenges includes just generally what are our principles in the neighborhood?

And you can see on our next slide, sometimes those principles are in conflict with each other.

And I'll pick on a street like 43rd where We're going to open a really incredible light rail station that Metro would like to have bus service serve on 43rd.

But members of the community would also love for that to be a pedestrian-only street, we heard in public comment today.

It is currently, for all intents and purposes, two blocks of very limited right-of-way with very limited cars on it today.

I think that there's a really interesting vision for the community to have that be a pedestrian-only street.

Metro wants to run buses on that street.

SDOT has designed it in a way that's going to have curbs.

That may be working for pedestrian-only.

It may not work for pedestrian-only.

So in order for the group to really coalesce around some recommendations, they had to start with some principles.

And these are their six principles.

Giving top priority to pedestrian movement.

Designing for pedestrian access to the station.

Configure an efficient and flexible bus route network.

create a safe and attractive street environment for people of all abilities, complete that bicycle network, and address the multimodal challenges that we have on 43rd, which is a very busy corridor.

So we got some recommendations, phase one and phase two.

Phase one being things that they'd like to see the city, Sound Transit, and Metro do before the station opens, and then phase two being the things that will happen after the station opens, the light rail station opens.

So you can see we just did a little rundown here.

Preparing a hub plan to inform future route planning as the service changes happen for Metro bus service in anticipation of the 2021 opening of the station Working with Metro on all of the things where they're gonna lay over buses, what kind of buses they're gonna be running, how do we improve the east-west connections in that corridor, particularly on 45th.

45th has unfortunately been, as you know, delayed in terms of the rapid ride line planning.

It's not in the current six-year plan.

The Roosevelt rapid ride line is still in the six-year plan, but we'll still have a lot of important buses that'll be running on 45th.

They just won't be running as a rapid ride.

Working with Sound Transit to convey Continue configurations on 43rd and as you heard in public testament as I understand the desktop project team is going to be very close to announcing what their final Design preference would be on 43rd.

So we look forward to that coming soon and then additional pedestrian and bicycle protections both on 11th and 45th Avenue Phase two recommendations, how do we think about electrification of our bus fleet?

We've got a lot of buses running up and down the ave and on 15th, we'll have a lot more buses with the reconfiguration.

Implementation of rapid ride lines.

And I know that there's a really strong interest in contemplating having those rapid ride lines on 45th go down the viaduct and serve University Village and around the corner to Seattle Children's.

That's a very important missing connection, I think, for a lot of folks right now.

And when you add to the fact that there's limited geography in the U District for those buses to lay over and then turn around and go back towards Ballard, getting that connection straight to the hospitals is a little more space.

You got a little more room to stretch out.

Pedestrian improvements on the Ave and on 50th to Cowan Park is also very important.

And Brooklyn is a really interesting street.

It's long been thought of as a green street, which could be for bikes, pedestrians, and transit, but not for cars.

There's a lot of interest in kind of reanalyzing Brooklyn and what's the right mix of multimodal investments on that street, particularly for the block between 43rd and 45th.

Long-term vision, I think that there's a lot of folks who are interested in kicking cars off the app There's a lot of folks who are interested in keeping cars on the app that will continue to be Like what we see in Pike Place market a healthy tension between those who want to see an active pedestrian corridor turned over to exclusively pedestrian corridor where others who really want to hang on to the idea that cars are placed things that should be allowed everywhere in the city I would love to see us pedestrianize both of those places.

And then continuing to work through those challenges around Brooklyn and 43rd.

So, that concludes our sort of brief background on the community.

The resolution is supported by a whole host of community members, many of whom who would have been here today.

I guess the sunny weather deterred a lot of people from attending today's meeting.

But the resolution in and of itself is effectively a blessing of this work and a desire to affirm that the community, with our financial support, pulled together this vision.

So again, instead of having to be responsive to SDOT, Metro, Sound Transit, the University of Washington, and others, they could develop that vision first and then allow for others to work within that vision as new projects come online.

So, excited to bring this forward.

I know you have a thousand questions.

I can't wait to hear them all.

Okay, so at the northeast intersection of, no, I'm just kidding.

I think this is an amazing body of work.

Councilmember Johnson, I appreciate your leadership and really appreciate community members.

In the university district, you frankly, once again, have come together in a way that kind of models some really great behavior about really being proactive and thinking about a vision.

And really doing it in a way that's, I've always been impressed about the inclusiveness and the visioning for not just who's there today, but who's going to be there in years and making sure that this is an area that it's growing, it's changing, that it's going to accommodate all those future needs.

So it's outstanding.

I think from a climate and a transportation of the future perspective, values are really aligned.

Here I think in general with the city.

So I think that's great I look forward to passing this next steps as far as you know, once this becomes city policy officially Do you have a sense of how those conversations will continue and proceed?

Well as you and I both know resolutions come with them come with a different set of requirements than ordinances do and You know, I think our objective with the resolution is to really bless that work and then ask our departments to continue to work collaboratively with this coalition of actors who've come together with this vision.

The most immediate near-term step on that is related to the design of 43rd and Brooklyn and the relationship between those designs and plans for metro bus service on those two streets as the light rail station opens.

So I think that that's, you know, the really important crux of a lot of our conversations that are happening right now.

Our SDOT teams are sitting here in the audience today who are putting the finishing touches on the several different design options and looking forward to, I know, getting public feedback from the public about those design options, particularly on 43rd.

There's obviously complications around the light rail station because we've already, for all intents and purposes, permitted what that station design looks like and the right-of-way immediately adjacent to that station.

So there will need to continue to be collaboration between us and Sound Transit if we're going to be asking them to make changes as well.

It is a common frustration I know for both you and I to be sitting here in 2019 talking about how a station can't be changed even though we're still a year and a half or two years away from that station being open.

So, I think some of this is going to be about just continuing to maintain good relationships between the individuals who are doing work on the ground and our respective bureaucracies to cultivate a vision that works well for everybody.

That's great.

Well, you know, to be clear, we're definitely not talking about park and ride at this station.

Correct.

And so the tension we're seeing is between bus access and pedestrian access.

And so I appreciate that those are the priorities that we're trying to navigate.

And I've been frustrated in the past with light rail, including Tuskegee Stadium, that we haven't got transit access better.

That said, outside of downtown, this station has the potential to, frankly, have the most people that are beginning or ending their trips as pedestrians and making those connections to whether it's jobs and university or whatever.

And so it can be a really exciting pedestrian node and how we make sure that it's safe.

The six principles here, I think, are outstanding.

And as you mentioned, there may be conflict between them, but I'm really hopeful and look to our community partners and the agency partners to find solutions where they're actually not in conflict.

And so let's find a path that can hopefully lift up all six of these principles in a way that they all work and we're not having to make too big of trade-offs.

And I know that's not always easy, but I think we've got some great design folks in town so we can do that.

So great.

Well, let's take this to the next step.

So I'd love to ask for your support and adoption of Resolution 31873. I will second.

All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

And this will move on to full council next week.

Thanks so much.

And thank you everyone in the audience.

If there's nothing else, we'll be adjourned.